Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Wiscasset’s Ammi Bai Chung has been speaking via social media with Ukrainian families the artist-bed and breakfast operator called amazing. She has booked a stay at a Kyiv bed and breakfast for a visit this month she is not making, but paid for in support of Ukraine. And Chung has been posting on Instagram at @ammibaichung her artworks in progress, inspired by the scenes news cameras are capturing.

“My heart needed to do something. We’re hearing we thought this would never happen again, that we’d learned from World War I and World War II. This (invasion) is so visible through social media and phones, and Americans are saying, what can we do, and we feel like we can’t do enough,” Chung told Wiscasset Newspaper.

Chung and several more Wiscasset residents are showing support for Ukraine via the blue and yellow of its flag. Chung has a flag on order from a Maine business she said is donating to the relief effort. When Ukrainian flags went up in the neighborhood, Chung said son Aja, 15, told her, “Mom, we really need to get a flag.”

March 15, selectmen said banners Selectman Terry Heller bought that look like the Ukraine flag could go up downtown. Heller told Wiscasset Newspaper the six two-foot by three-foot ones she ordered arrived March 17. The next day at Heller’s home at Federal and Morton streets, Chung, daughter Anjali, 7, and Larry Flowers checked out the banners Heller later said were going up March 20, facing Main Street. That meant blue on the left, Heller explained. “As you’re facing it, the blue is left. (If) you fly it, blue on top.”

Cynthia Pappas’s flag was hanging from her Hodge Street home, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church’s former rectory. “Like everyone with a soul, I am heartbroken by the events in Ukraine, and feel pretty powerless,” Pappas said in an email response. “I was speaking with Jon Young, the warden at St. Philip's, who mentioned he ordered a Ukrainian flag for his home from a local Maine company (https://1901originalmaineflag.com/products/ukrainian-flag-maine-made) which was kicking back 20% to help Ukraine. He sent me the link  and I ordered one. I then shared the link with several friends on Federal Street in a group text. Everyone was keen to show their support. It's  comforting, at least, to find something we can all agree on and display that unity within the village.”

Flowers said he wanted to help show solidarity with the Ukrainian people. “It’s one of the small things we can do to help.”

Asking fellow selectmen’s permission, Heller recalled Wiscasset putting ribbons on trees early in the pandemic. “It was a way of saying, ‘We’re all in this together.’ And there’s that urge again, with the start of this war, and I was responding to that” by getting the banners with the Ukrainian colors, she said. “It would (show) Wiscasset cares ... We feel for these people.” Heller told the meeting, “It’s a connection that I have gathered in feelings and in words from all sides,” regardless of people’s politics.

Selectman Pam Dunning called it a nice way to show support. “And it’s a better way to keep the Ukrainian people in our minds than endlessly watching these horrible news stories.”

Those images struck Chung so deeply, she said she had to paint them. “It’s intense work, it’s very emotional, but with what I’m seeing, I can’t help it. Your soul needs to process it.”